Here’s the scene: I’m sitting at a table in my daughter’s middle school with a pile of neatly laid-out parts that look like IKEA decided to make electronics. I’m surrounded by dear friends and fellow community members along with teachers and administrators. We’ve all visited the elaborate coffee station set up in a corner and have consumed enough caffeine to make our pupils vibrate at the rate of purely theoretical particles. The atmosphere is, to be honest, tense as there are 27 such piles on tables distributed at regular intervals around the library. Our job is to transform them into cutting-edge technology for the students. Also, there are pastries.

Dave Brown oversees our team with understandable concern

The machines everyone is going to try and build are 3D printers, something hardly anyone in the room has ever seen before. It would be like grabbing a random selection of people from the sidewalk bazaar and saying, “Lets go up to O’Maley and build two dozen flying waffle irons!” But besides stacking the bench with a few tech-whiz ringers, School Technology Specialist Dave Brown and Science teacher Amy Donnelly did essentially just that: they put out an open call to the public to build 27 of these babies over the course of a weekend.

No experience necessary.

The parts and instructions are here, take a look. Sound like a risky plan?

There are no printed instructions. On each table there is a laptop. We’re told to click on the videos and do what the narrator says, but it’s loud in the library and the built-in laptop speakers suck. The video narrator/instructor is a dude named “Colin” …How does one say this? He sounds sort of like that guy in high school who could make his own electric guitars, but kinda sorta spent a lot of time in that one bathroom with “Bob Marley Lives!” carved into the door, if you know what I mean.

Colin is not the most concise of fellows and occasionally does essential tasks offscreen and apparently does not know how to edit his videos. Each one is an exceptionally long take of him going, “Uh, OK, that was sort of wrong, so undo that last part…” He’s like your college roommate on Saturday night after you’ve been studying all day and he’s been “hanging out” and now he’s trying to explain Kirkegaard to you. Colin is a genius to be sure and you love the guy, but you and he are on different planes of reality right now.

Maggie and Joe listen to Colin with earned skepticism

We sixty-odd caffeine-buzzing volunteers lean into the laptops and follow as best we can, trying not to screw up, because we’re building the printers for a new lab at the O’Maley Innovation Middle School (motto: Yes, innovation!) and these are notoriously finicky beasts. The kits were donated by the Gloucester Education Foundation [give them moneyz!]. The assembling was donated by local educators, administrators and community members. Food donated by local restaurants and bakeries. Ironic T-shirts worn by many participants courtesy of the Internet.

Amy and David are the Field Marshals trying to make all this happen and work. They have taken a tremendous risk in the community-build approach and bear an enormous burden as the hours tick too quickly by and we’re all holding up parts going, “What the crap did Colin say about cutting away extraneous plastic on the extruder gear axle assembly?” They dash about, distributing advice and trying to allay fears. But by Saturday afternoon, 11 hours in, only two of the kits are laying down plastic. The rest of us are tangled up in wire harnesses, “Z-axis motor stops” and fretting the tension of our belt drives. Long light starts to shine in through the windows as the sun descends.

WAIT, BACK UP. WHAT THE HELL IS A 3D PRINTER AND WHY SHOULD ANYONE CARE?

As Scruffy McNerdman testifies in the vid, 3D printing is technology overturning the way we make and use things. It will have massive implications as we move from the crude printers of today to cheaper and much higher resolution devices of tomorrow, where it will be possible to print standard objects but also food, medical devices, electronics and even human organs (there are over 100 people today with 3D printed soft tissue organs).

A quick example of how a future version of this technology will impact every one of our lives:

There are things I hate about my minivan. Not just that it makes me look like a khaki-wearing suburban soccer dad who owns a ride-on lawnmower and the Billy Joel boxed set. What I really hate about it is that the interior is clearly designed for the boringest people on Earth. First of all, the beverage holder is designed for a ‘Big Gulp’ sized soda and is thus so vast any normal-sized drink I put in there is bound to spill and create a disgusting crust resembling the interior of the spaceship in the movie Alien. It also has a built-in soda cooler because of course more soda (there should be space for a portable dialysis machine with all the soda infrastructure this car has). It has carpets for people who apparently enjoy lounging around in their car barefoot. It has all of one USB charging port. On long car trips our daughter Rebecca is designated DJ and she has to run a cord from the dashboard to her back seat so she can run the music system from her tablet because the makers of this vehicle assumed the adults in the front are the ones who should be picking the music for a van full of tweens and teens. The people who designed this van are not from this planet.

Our family is not being optimally served by the current setup. The one USB port is a hassle for a family who won’t go the other side of town without enough smartphones, tablets and laptops to run a mid-sized advertising agency. Everything we do seems to involve mud, snow and dirt: beach, soccer, hikes in the woods. We have bikes, boats, a collie who likes to roll around in any disgusting thing she finds and my wife goes to Aprilla Farms weekly and loads the whole interior up with some kind of gourd or beet or root or dirty brown knobby thing that’s supposed to be good for you. We basically need a combination of a Subaru and the US Army 2.5 ton utility truck with its own IT infrastructure.

In not too long (sooner than you think) I will go to the dealer and she will sit me down and I’ll tell her all this and they will build a car to suit for the same cost as a car today. Printing and finishing a custom vehicle will incur no penalty on the manufacturing process all due to the advances being made on crude looking jumbles of wood and wire like the ones now sitting on tables around the 3D printing lab in our very own middle school.

The vid below is some dudes actually doing this and they finally have a proof of concept prototype. I hung around with them at a tech show a couple of years ago and we got drinks. They are really cool save for the fact that they insisted on wearing aviation flight suits everywhere. I was worried we were going to get our asses kicked when we went out, but we wound up at ‘Miracle of Science’ on Mass Ave in Cambridge where the menu is based on the periodic table of elements, so no worries in that department.

3D PRINTING OBJECTIONS, MADE BY IDIOTS

Online I saw a few objections to this technology from people who probably were the same folks who used to leave long, rambling messages on your answering machine back in the day saying things like, “Hello? Hellooo…oh, gracious. I really don’t like talking to a machine. Jimmy? Are you theeeeere? I have to tell you something about Thanksgiving, the address changed. Call me and I’ll tell you [Click].”

“Oh mercy! I saw on the Internet you can make a gun! Right there in school! Won’t someone Pleeese think of the children?” OK, sure, with a much more expensive and higher resolution printer than the ones we have, if you took a month of dedicated time and a variety of tools and some additional highly complex finishing you can make a very, very terrible gun. By the time you finished this gun it would have about the accuracy, quality and effectiveness of a Revolutionary War flintlock pistol but with way less likelihood it would actually fire even once. You can make pretty much the same “gun” from stuff at Ace Hardware.

“Consumer 3D printing is all hype, you can’t make anything useful” As a guy who deals with technology adoption every day, I agree from a current market standpoint. But these machines at O’Maley actually produce something much more useful than little plastic figurines: educated people. Little model Yoda heads are not, in and of themselves, worth anything. However individuals who can go from raw concept to software model to an actual thing are, however, invaluable considering where everything is going.

3D printing will lead to atomic scale nanofabrication, transcending capitalism and creating a post-scarcity utopia just like in Star Trek The Next Generation. All I have to say is: “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

3D PRINTING COMES TO GLOUCESTER

The GEF grant could have bought eight pre-assembled printers and a small group of students would have been able to use them on a limited basis. But what we’ve come to understand about technology in schools is that it only works well when everyone has full access. This was the logic behind getting the entire 8th grade Chromebooks, which has been nothing short of transformative.

The better option was getting 30 kits and then assembling them. They take somewhere between 12-20 hours to put together and as I began to explain above the assembly requires, among other skills; soldering, wiring, hooking up a circuit board, installing motors and belt drives, gear assemblies, setting up and correctly installing fragile heat sensors called “thermistors” along with more tiny little screws and nuts than individual cereal bits in a “Family Size” box of Rice Krispies from The Basket.

Science Teacher Amy Donnelly schools Haig on his wiring

So, rejoining our story in the O’Maley library, now it’s 8pm on Saturday and 16 hours have elapsed. I’ve cranked down part of a BLT all day because our laserlike focus has been bringing our machine to life. At my team’s table KT Toomey and Steve Brosnihan and I are surrounded by a low tide of wires, parts, tools and 63 empty tiny little cans of Mountain Dew. We’re sweating it. Even though our build is technically done, things aren’t moving as they should. Our printer is sputtering around as if possessed by unclean spirits.

Besides the two machines brought to life earlier in the day (Props to Joel Favazza and those two engineer/machinist dudes who sneezed out their machines while the rest of us were still giggling every time Colin said “nuttrap.”), nobody is getting any plastic through. At the coffee station secret doubts are expressed. The tone is of a hospital drama in the middle of a mass-casualty triage: “I’m not sure mine’s gonna pull through. We’re doing everything we can. I don’t know how I’m gonna face the family if it doesn’t make it…”

Ours, which we quickly dubbed with the sci-fi robot villain name “SCULPTRON” (All Hail SCULPTRON!) is in critical condition. Every time we power up it makes a loud noise that resembles what I imagine C3PO’s farts would sound like. Servos are flitting around randomly as if to signal, “Help! SCULPTRON has been built by idiots! Why do you let me live like this! I beg you to KILL SCULPTRON in the name of mercy KILL MEEE!!!!”

SCULPTRON sounds and acts nothing like the two smoothly humming machines at the front assembled by students over the summer. These are happily tended by the clever teens and are cheerfully cranking out well-formed plastic doodads at a regular pace. It turns out these teens are the secret weapon of this whole project.

This kid saved our nerdy behinds.

Over the summer they did a week long session with some students and a few of the kits. They were taught how to build, program and use the devices culminating in a huge Mexican feast on the last day. Catch: you could only eat with utensils you had designed and printed. Those kids were undisputed heroes this weekend. They popped around to different tables, helped readjust parts here, gave advice there. They knew how all the wiring worked and could tell you what was wrong. One of them took a sidelong glance at SCULPTRON, who was now lurching around clumsily as if someone had served him the robotic equivalent of a half dozen scorpion bowls.

“Your mechanical parts look fine. Redo all your wiring.”

Huzzah, kid, you were exactly right! We found a mis-wired connection and reinserted one of the control motors on its pins from the motherboard and suddenly SCULPTRON was efficiently zipping around like his robot brethren at the front of the room (and no doubt thirsting for revenge against his human defilers).

Can I tell you the joy I felt when SCULPTRON first laid plastic? It wasn’t holding my kids for the first time (hey ladies, you are 3D printers too!) but it was in that direction. There will be those who claim I cranked up the speakers I’d brought to better hear Colin’s mumbling and danced about the room capering wildly to the 80’s pop hit “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor. That, people, is a lie. It was actually “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. C’mon, Survivor? Really?

“It’s working! Have you ever seen something so beautiful?”

On Sunday the rest of the kits started to come to life. One by one we spun the tunes as a new table started making objects to the cheers of its builders and suddenly the room was filled with little fish, aliens, plastic cubes, frogs and other test items. An increasing number of kids, most of them elementary schoolers who could no longer be kept away by their parents, showed up and just took over. They instinctively began printing objects as we adults worked on getting the remaining kits up to speed.

How many did we get working you ask? 22, compadres. We got all but 5 printing and even those that weren’t completed are being finished off this week. After the immensely patient custodian finally kicked us out late Sunday night, I crashed on our couch at home, depleted. It took about three minutes for me to start getting texts, emails, IMs and messages from a few folks wondering how the machine they’d put hours into but had to abandon for parental responsibilities turned out. Also were elevated thank-yous, virtual high fives and literally teary well-deserved shout-outs to David and Amy. It really was a community event like no other I’ve ever been a part of. People were deep in this project, way deep. We’re still coming back to reality.

I want to say that I don’t think there a lot of places that could have done this. Where else do you find 600+ hours of competent volunteer time from people who will give up a whole weekend, and who have the DIY chops to throw together a complicated piece of hardware like this? To me it speaks of the best of Gloucester, the stuff that makes it impossible to consider ever living anywhere else. Fanatical devotion to each other, the unrepentant love of a crazy plan, dedicated visionaries to make it all work and a railtanker full of coffee.

Once again another knock out killer entertaining performance. I don’t care if you don’t know anyone performing in this play, it is worth attending for the performances alone. My girls absolutely love it. There’s still chances to see it too- check the schedule and plan to attend. I promise you’ll be glad you did!

O’Maley Innovation School Drama Club presents musical, “Fame Jr.”

The O’Maley Innovation School Performing Arts Department cordially invites members of the Cape Ann Community to attend this year’s musical production of “Fame Jr.” The six shows, performed by two different casts and over 80 talented actors, actresses, and crew members, are scheduled on:

Note I mention in the Video that there are performances Saturday and Sunday of this week but that is incorrect, the correct times for future performances are listed below-

· Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 7:00 p.m.

· Friday, March 7, 2014 at 7:00 p.m.

· Saturday, March 8, 2014 at 1:00 p.m.

· Sunday, March 9, 2014 at 1:00 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased at the door and are $5.00 for students and seniors and $7.00 for adults. All proceeds finance future productions. Questions about the performances? Call 978-281-9850.

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Celebrating Service
O’Maley Innovation Middle School 2nd Annual Day of Service
Friday, October 25, 2013

In their own words…
Student reflections on Day of Service:

“It felt so good seeing everyone helping each other out, and seeing everyone participating and having fun- while cleaning! When we came back, we watched The Giving Tree. That got me thinking how awesome it is to help other people out without them asking. I had a lot of fun getting to go outside with my friends and help the school out.”
Pharah Donlan, gr 6

“I helped organize the school store. I folded the clothes, I brought all the emergency bags into all the classes and grades. I felt good about myself, just like the boy in the Giving Tree.”
Samantha Sullivan, gr 6

“Just like in the Giving Tree, we asked and received (rakes!), and then we gave- to help clean the outside. It was very cold – to keep warm, we huddled in a group hug when we had filled 4 large trash bags.”
Sam Ciolino, gr 6

“Today, we cleaned up our school, the Ralph B. O’Maley Middle School. We did not do it for recognition or publicity, we did it because it made us feel good. We did it because it made our hearts feel good. You know that feeling when you do something for the community or even another person without someone even asking you, that’s why we did it.
Drew Bouchie, gr 6

“At O’Maley, we have a school acronym, S.A.I.L.S., which stands for service, acceptance, integrity, leadership and success. I definitely think our school did all that today. And we also made a memory that I believe we will have throughout this year.”
Asha Egmont, gr 6

“We eventually all joined together to pick up pinecones, trash, etc. up on the hill. I think we all did a great job together, and I hope we do it again.”
Silas Emerson, gr 6

“The connection I made between the Giving Tree and our service project was that just like the tree, the Earth has given us EVERYTHING we need. Now, like the boy, we need to give back, like picking up trash and depolluting.”
Justin Bushfield, gr 6

“I felt like I understood the story because it was cold and I was tired but I still helped. It was very hard work, just as when the tree was giving away things for the boy. But overall, it does pay off.”
Issac Aiello, gr 6

“My class helped today by picking up trash and raking leaves. And in the story, the tree helped by giving the boy not exactly what he wanted, but what he needs. So, both in the story and in real life, there was help included.”
Thiago Ferreira, gr 6

“In the Giving Tree”, the boy took and never gave back. I try to give back to the environment, because I take a lot from it. O’Maley S.A.I.L.S. program is about helping others and making good choices. To make life better for everyone, we should take care of the environment and stick to S.A.I.L.S.
Sophia Hogan-Lopez, gr 6

“Today, the whole O’Maley School went to help clean the city of Gloucester. The 6th grade stayed at the school and cleaned there. The 7th graders went to elderly peoples’ homes to help them out, and the 8th grade went all over the place. And we all had so much fun.”
Briana Bruni, gr 7

“To be honest, I really didn’t want to come out today, but after I was done, I felt really good. Maya Angelou’s advice is very true- we can’t just take or receive, we also need to give back. Today, we had a chance to do this.”
Aiden Cunha, gr 7

“Today I put my time into my community. And now I’m thinking back on my service. Looking back on it, I felt really good. Even though I didn’t get a physical reward, I got a really good feeling in my heart. Maya Angelou’s words mean that you can’t just keep on taking and taking. You have to give back- which we did today.”
Rodney Nyborg, gr 7

“I am really proud of myself and my classmates. It’s like the quote, because the community helps us, so we need to find ways to give back. J S.A.I.L.S.”
Ruby Melvin, gr 7

“I was extremely cold and my gloves were ripped. I was cold, but it felt really good. What I did felt great. Today, I took off the other catcher’s mitt and threw back.”
Noah Schott, gr 7

“I have been in my car and seen elderly people raking leaves, pulling up roots in the cold. So I felt that what I did today helped somebody that was not capable of doing what we did for them.”
Joseph Reimersma, gr 7

“As I sit here writing this with my frozen hands, I realize I feel good about the service I did today. I raked the yard of a nice man on Blueberry Lane. It was cold out. I was in charge of holding open the trash bags. I ripped my purple latex gloves and fell into a bush. But in the end, it was all worth it. I did some service that followed Maya Angelou’s advice: “I’ve learned that you can’t go through live with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.”
Johanna Couture, gr 7

“I was at the Sargent Murray Gilman House today. We picked up leaves and put them in a compost bin. When Huey Lewis says “Some people take and never give”, we did give today. We gave back to the community today by cleaning up a public place that people like to go to. It felt good to give back today.”
Jack Tallgrass, gr 8

“Today I went to the Cape Ann Museum. I helped rake the leaves in the courtyard and clean up around the museum. As I was doing this, I felt proud because our school can make a difference, by helping other people and other community locations. Huey Lewis’ lyrics say that “if we all give a little it could mean a lot”. Today we helped out a little and it meant a lot.”
Mikaela Carpenter, gr 8

“So today, what our school did was service. It was very cold, but my class and I got through it and kept on working. We gave back or said “thank you”- in return for something good that the world did for us. We went out of our way to help clean other people’s yards, and we survived!
Vanessa Rodolosi, gr 8

“Huey Lewis’ lyrics have a lot to do with what we did today. As stated in the song, “We can fight one another/like they do on t.v./or we can/help one another/the way it’s supposed to be.” If we had fought over who did what, then we would have gotten few leaves raked up at the Unitarian Church. By working together, we left the church with far less to do than there was before we came. This felt great. In our world, if we worked more to help the needy, it would make a better place.”
Matthew Smith, gr 8

“Today we raked Mr. and Mrs. O’Neill’s yard. I saw how grateful Mrs. O’Neill was, and I thought to myself that if something as simple as raking could make someone so happy, that if everyone just pitched in, it could make our ‘small world’ a better place.”
Haley Johnson, gr 8

“In the song lyrics of Huey Lewis, he explains how doing something no matter how small can mean a great amount to someone. This is a small world if we help each other. Today, my class went to a home near Manchester. Although today wasn’t the warmest, everyone’s spirits became brighter once we got there. Suddenly we had a lot of energy which we used to help someone in our community and make a difference. We learned to do something out of our own free will and not for something in return. This greatly made me happy.”
Soo Ae Ono, gr 8

“If every class or school in the world did this, then it would really make a difference, because like Huey Lewis says, it’s a small world and we can make a change.”
Ethan Brennan, gr 8

“I think my generation should do more things like this and just notice how it could make life so much better and happier in our ‘small world’”.
Mollie-Mae McGillivary, gr 8

“Today we went to Mrs. Lally’s yard in West Gloucester. She was a former teacher at O’Maley, so she gave a lot to the kids and the community. So it felt great to help her out and give back to her. This service is a very important part of life and everyone should help each other out once in a while, because it feels great and could really make someone’s day.”
Harley Perreira, gr 8

“In the last stanza of Huey Lewis’ lyrics for “Small World”, it is indicating that doing something small for someone means a lot to them because you took the time out of your own day to do it. Something so little can make someone else so happy.”
Brittany Turner, gr 8

“We raked and pulled weeds and fixed her garden. We gave a little from ourselves, and I hope it means a lot.”
Alexis Thompson, gr 8

“When Huey Lewis is saying that “when we give a little, it could really mean a lot”, he is saying that even the little things we do can mean a lot to other people. When I was cleaning, it felt good that I was making someone happy by clearing their yard for them. Because maybe they couldn’t. Giving back to people and to your community is very important in today’s society.”
C.J. Renales, gr 8

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Last Friday, the O’Maley Middle School cafeteria served lettuce in its salad bar… and students actually ate some! The real news is that this lettuce was grown by the sixth grade students of Island House… in the school library! Under the direction of science teacher Roger Davis, the students created planters out of two-liter soda bottles, linked together in a siphon-fed watering system. A three-liter bottle supplies the whole class’s set of lettuce planters, and the siphon passes the water from one planter to the next. The plants absorb the water by cappilary action, so the plants never need to be watered. With the garden and water all held in these containers, the lettuce bed was set in the school library, whose large sunroof gives the plants plenty of light. Six weeks later, the students harvested the first cutting, with more still to come. With this project students are learning basic plant science, indoor or container gardening techniques, and the principles of water and air pressure used in the siphon water system. Seeds and soil for this project were donated to the school by Wolf Hill Garden Center.

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Joey, Thank you for all the support that GMG gave the team this year. The parents and girls loved opening up GMG and seeing their pictures. To wrap up our season, I thought that I would share the Captains speeches that they gave at our celebration party. They said it the BEST! These speeches represent the type of athletes we have in Gloucester, the team spirit , and culture that was created amongst the girls this year. It was truly amazing to watch them practice and improve each day. The dedication and commitment was solid. The coaches are proud of the girls and thrilled to have been a part of such an accomplishment.

O’MALEY FIELD HOCKEY TEAM CAPTAINS SO PROUD OF THE TEAM 14-0

Callie O’Leary writes-

Team. Team means a group of people linked in a common purpose. We are group of individuals that support each other. We all share a love for field hockey. That is what links us. Throughout the season, we have learned to play as friends and to play as one. There is no "I" in team. We support each other. I am very fortunate to be on this field hockey team. It has been an honor to serve as Captain on the 2012 O’Malley UNDEFEATED Field Hockey team. I am so proud of what a great team we are. We have stayed strong on the field and we never backed down. We have remained together throughout the season. We kicked butt!!!! We stayed undefeated because we played with our heads in the game and turned it on! I am so proud! Love you guys!!!!! Callie O’Leary 2017 Captain

McKenzie Plante writes-

I am so happy that I got to share my last year of O’Maley field hockey with this team. I have created new friendships and have learned many life lessons with in practices games, bus rides and fun times in the locker rooms! I feel that once are cleats were on and we were playing field-hockey everyone was friends; we were one big family. In the end, it didn’t matter who scored or who had the amazing drive or who stopped the ball. What mattered was that we all walked off the field as a team and that’s what we did. The bus rides and locker room experiences who could forget them? "Girl on fire", pizza on the bus or when that one reff wouldn’t stop calling things on us, we still took the win. Best of all of celebration in Boston. I am pretty sure that we will all recall these memories when we are in high school. Guess what were undefeated!!! 14-0 We couldn’t of done it without our three coaches. Mom, Marcy Plante, I can here you from a mile away… I can here you scream goal post, then shout in excitement when you hear the boom of the ball slamming the net. Allison Monell, I always love running off the field, you are always there to welcome us. Ellen Prescott, you made our defense so strong and your energy helped us do our best on the field. I am so proud of my team. I’m proud of all of you girls. I got to have the experience of a life time! We couldn’t of done it without Jenna and Brie, our crazy defense who would stop anyone that tried to past and our offence who were GOAL crazy, scoring over 53 goals! Let’s give it up to a team that worked our hardest and earned what we deserved, a team that never gave up, a team that never went easy, a team I call my family. McKenzie Plante 2017 Captain

Emma Lamoureux writes-

Girls, what an amazing season. Being an undefeated team was a high goal that not all teams could have accomplished but this team did. WE have all grown and learned how to work together not just on the field but as a family. Everyone put in an amount of effort that was unbelievable and stepped up when they needed too. Everyone on this team always had the best attitude, no matter what and was always ready to play . Being a part of this field hockey team gave me a new family and that is why I will never forget this season. Emma Lamoureux 2017 Captain

O’Maley Field Hockey Team Still Undefeated After Beating Marblehead

Hi Joey, Here are a bunch of pictures from the NEC Championship Meet/Jim Munn Invitational. One of the parents was kind enough to take pictures throughout the meet. There were over 1600 athletes who ran in the meets.

A great day for Gloucester and the O’Maley teams finished 3rd for the girls and 6th for the boys.

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Joey!! The O’Maley Field Hockey team is undefeated!! We have scored 31 goals this year!! The girls are playing so hard and have come so far!! The pictures are of our three captains, Callie O’Leary, Emma Larmoureux, and McKenzie Plante, one of them celebrating their win and the other a great team picture. We have 5 more games left!

O’Maley Middle School Wind Turbine Dedication January 25th

Cinema also marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day with special screening

Cape Ann Community Cinema at 21 Main Street in Gloucester continues its "Film Festival That Never Ends" programming with two filmmaker events in the coming week.

On Tuesday, January 31, director Ron Wyman visits with his film, "Agadez: The Music And The Rebellion." In it, Wyman depicts without romanticizing or sentimentalizing the lives of the Tuareg, an ancient Saharan nomadic tribe who, since the 12th century, have linked North Africa and West Africa, guiding their camel caravans across the desert, spreading art and music from Egypt to Mali. He spotlights one remarkable young musician, Omara “Bombino” Moctar, whose story of exile and return is typical for his generation. Wyman will answer questions after the film. Tickets are $9.50 adults, $8.00 students & seniors (60+) and $6.50 for Members.

On Saturday, February 4 at 5:00pm, director Zach Levy visits with his film, "Strongman," a cinema verité documentary about Stanless Steel, the self-proclaimed ‘Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel and Metal.’ Told with the kind of intimacy that can only be achieved with years of filming, the film follows the dreams and heartbreaking humanity of Stanless Steel — the only man alive who can bend a penny with his fingers — as he struggles to gain control of a world that seems constantly out of his grasp. Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the best films of the year.

Levy will answer questions after the film. Tickets are $9.50 adults, $8.00 students & seniors (60+) and $6.50 for Members.

On Sunday, February 5 across the street at The Annie at 1 Washington Street, Levy will conduct a "Documentary 101" workshop, an intensive, 6-hour instruction in all aspects of non-fiction filmmaking, including selecting a subject and storytelling style, basic interviewing technique and ways to get your finished film seen. The cost of the workshop is $99.00, and seats can be reserved at www.CapeAnnCinema.com.

On Thursday, January 26 at 7:30pm, the Cinema, in conjunction with Temple Ahavat Achim of Gloucester, will present the acclaimed documentary "Inside Hana’s Suitcase." The film is a story of power and hope, wrapped in the mystery ofg a young girl’s suitcase that came from the Auschwitz Museum. Tickets are $9.50 adults, $8.00 students & seniors (60+) and $6.50 for Members.

Another special film event this week is the premiere of "Joffrey: Mavericks Of American Dance." The debut documentary explores the vanguard Chicago dance troupe, and will be shown with a live, post-film Q&A via satellite. Tickets are $9.50 adults, $8.00 students & seniors (60+) and $6.50 for Members.

Gloucester Webcam

The GloucesterCast Podcast

Free GMG Gloucester Sticker

As long as supplies last if any GMG folks want a bumper sticker but can't drop down the dock, just send a self addressed and stamped envelope longer then 7 and a half inches and I'll drop one in the mail for you.

Send the self addressed and stamped envelope to the dock at 95 East Main St Gloucester Ma 01930 care of Joey (put my name in big letters to make sure it gets to me)

Free GMG Gloucester Sticker

As long as supplies last if any GMG folks want a bumper sticker but can't drop down the dock, just send a self addressed and stamped envelope longer then 7 and a half inches and I'll drop one in the mail for you.

Send the self addressed and stamped envelope to the dock at 95 East Main St Gloucester Ma 01930 care of Joey (put my name in big letters to make sure it gets to me)